A festering three-fer for the odious Martin Bashir. Not content to inflict him on the viewing public him during his own slot, MSNBC put Bashir on The Ed Show this evening, where he proceeded to slime, in one fetid fell swoop, Mormons, evangelicals, and Mitt Romney. With Schultz all too quick to agree, Bashir claimed most evangelicals wouldn't support Romney because of his membership in the LDS church.

For his purposes, Bashir badly misrepresented a Mark Twain quote. Bashir claimed that "the vast majority" of evangelicals share Twain's view that the Book of Mormon is "chloroform," perhaps implying there was something poisonous about it. But reading what Twain wrote, it's obvious he was merely claiming to find the book boring. Video after the jump.

Watch the loathsome Bashir at work.

MARTIN BASHIR: What's interesting about Mitt Romney now is he's becoming so desperate, that he's broken one of his own rules this week. He's started talking about his Mormon faith. Earlier this week, he was talking about his experience as a Mormon minister, where he was caring for people with depression and who had suffered unemployment. I can tell you now, Ed, the vast majority of evangelicals in that [CPAC] building tomorrow believe Mormonism is a cult. They share --

ED SCHULTZ: Absolutely. They will not vote for a Mormon, although they won't say it publicly.

BASHIR: And they share Mark Twain's view of the Book of Mormon, which in 1861, as you probably know, he described it as "chloroform in print." And that's what many of these people believe. How can you win anyone when you can't win the party?

Does Bashir really believe most evangelicals, not to mention Ed Schultz, are focused on what Mark Twain wrote 151 years ago about the Book of Mormon? And just what did Twain write? Bashir darkly speaks of Twain calling the book "chloroform." Ooh, scary! But when you actually check it out, you find Clemens, in calling the Book "chloroform," merely meant that he found it . . . boring [emphasis added]:

"So "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate."